The Empire's Ruin by Brian Staveley

Author:Brian Staveley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates

* * *

They almost made it.

They were maybe two hundred paces from the head of the valley, from the horseshoe of cliffs and the caves at their base, when Rat tripped.

“Careful,” Gwenna said.

The girl looked back at her. “Careful?”

Gwenna tried to think how to explain it, then shook her head. It probably said something about her parenting that Rat knew the words for kill and stab, but not the word for careful.

“Just keep moving,” she said instead, pointing blearily toward the caves. “We’re almost—” The words withered in her throat.

Overhead, just above the saddle, silent, dark, and swift, a new shape sliced across the sky. Gwenna couldn’t make out the details, but she didn’t need to. She could imagine the talons tucked up beneath the bird’s body, the hook of the beak, the inhumanity of those eyes as they scoured the ground below.

“Admiral. Halt the column. Now.”

The words didn’t sound like her own. Or rather, they sounded like an order she might have given a year earlier, in a different life. A part of her marveled at the note of command, wondered where it had come from. A very small part. The rest of her was bent toward a single, simple end—escape. With an effort of will, she forced herself not to run. The caves were so close she could almost hit them with a stone.

Not close enough.

Up at the head of the column, Jonon turned.

“What?” he demanded, but before she could reply, the shadow passed over them—a scrap of night occluding the sun. “Kettral,” he said quietly, half reverently. He didn’t sound frightened. Didn’t look or smell frightened. Unlike Gwenna, he’d been readying himself for this. And unlike Gwenna, he’d never seen one of the birds take apart a one-ton bull like it was yesterday’s table scraps. “The caves—” he began.

She shook her head. “We won’t make it.”

That sent a ripple of disquiet through the soldiers. A few of the men had drawn swords, or nocked arrows to their bows. This would have been the first time most of them had ever encountered one of the birds. One or two might have been in Annur when the Urghul attacked the capital. They might have caught a glimpse of the Dawn King streaking across the sky, but they hadn’t had to fight him.

“Those caves are barely a bowshot away,” Jonon observed.

“We won’t make it,” she said again.

The admiral straightened. For all that he loathed her, he was smart enough not to argue. “Then we make a stand. Here.”

“Don’t stand.” She lowered herself slowly to her knees, bending forward until her face was pressed against the rough, cold stone. “Kneel. Slowly.”

She didn’t need to look up to smell Jonon’s disgust. “You expect my men to grovel? To let the bird take them?”

“The bird,” she replied, “hunts mostly by movement. If you want to survive, make yourself small, still. Make yourself a stone. Make yourself into nothing at all.”

For a few heartbeats Jonon was silent. The men smelled of fear now, fear mixed with confusion.

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